Course description
What is this course about?
Philosophy is both exciting and disturbing, exciting because you will confront a range of strange new ideas and disturbing because those ideas will challenge many of your firmly held beliefs. Philosophy will suit students with open, enquiring minds, who want to explore questions such as "Who am I?", "Does life have any purpose?", "Is my life just a dream?" and "Do I have any free will?",
What will I study?
At AS level you will consider the possibility that physical objects do not exist and question whether there is anything in the universe that we can be certain about. We investigate Descartes` famous claim `I think therefore I exist` and what it means to be a person., If you are successful at AS you can progress to the second year. At A2-level you explore the concepts of consciousness and self-consciousness and consider questions such as: , :
* Are human beings simply biological machines?
* Is it possible to develop robots with emotions?
We study two texts, usually Mill`s theory of liberty and Nietzsche+s theory of morality. We will consider questions such as:
* Should pornography be banned?
* Should racists forfeit the right to free speech?
* Are there only interpretations and no facts?
What can I do after the course?
Philosophy is a very highly regarded traditional subject; it is particularly useful for career development and university applications.
